Anneè Olofsson (Swedish) ,  Unfamiliar 3, 2001 Olofsson’s An Iconography

“You are the void and the cinder Bird without head with wings beating the night The universe is made of your slight hope

The universe is your sick heart and mine Beating to skim death To the cemetery of hope

My pain is joy And the cinder is fire.” Georges Bataille

« We can define rituals as symbolic techniques of making oneself at home in the world. They transform being-in-the-world into a being-at-home. They turn the world into a reliable place. They are to time what a home is to space: they render time habitable. They even make it accessible, like a house. They structure time, furnish it. . .

Ritual practices ensure that we treat not only other people but also things in beautiful ways. . .

[T]oday, many forms of repetition, such as learning by heart, are scorned on account of the supposed stifling of creativity and innovation they involve. The expression ‘to learn something by heart’, like the French apprendre par cœur, tells us that apparently only repetition reaches the heart. In the face of increasing rates of attention deficit disorder, the introduction of ‘ritual studies’ as a school subject has recently been advocated as a means of reviving the exercise of ritual repetition as a cultural technique. Repetition stabilizes and deepens attention. Rituals are characterized by repetition. Repetition differs from routine in its capacity to create intensity. »

— Byung-Chul Han, The Disappearance of Rituals

Capital (Abridged) in summary

Recently I formed with some friends a communist reading group, where we are currently making our way through Capital (Abridged).* To help the group members who are less experienced reading such theory, I have been preparing summaries of each chapter, which I have thought to begin sharing here as well!

Chapter I: Commodities, Prices, Profits

Chapter II: Profit and Value in Circulation

Chapter III: Value in Use and Exchange Value, the Socially Necessary Labor

Chapter IV: Purchase and Sale of Labor Power

Chapter V: How Surplus Value Arises

(Currently I have been writing these at a pace of 1–2 per week, but the posting schedule here will be a bit more frequent at the start, while I catch up)

*Ed. Julian Borchardt, 1919. Trans. Stephen L. Trask, 1932.

Doctor, that is kind of you

– Nothing is harmless anymore. The small joys, the expressions of life, which seemed to be exempt from the responsibility of thought, not only have a moment of defiant silliness, of the cold-hearted turning of a blind eye, but immediately enter the service of their most extreme opposite. Even the tree which blooms, lies, the moment that one perceives its bloom without the shadow of horror; even the innocent “How beautiful” becomes an excuse for the ignominy of existence, which is otherwise, and there is no longer any beauty or any consolation, except in the gaze which goes straight to the horror, withstands it, and in the undiminished consciousness of negativity, holds fast to the possibility of that which is better. •Minima Moralia: Reflections From Damaged Life, Theodor Adorno

uh so i never do this but maui is quite literally on fire and there isn't nearly enough care or consideration for. you know. Native Hawaiians who live here being displaced and the land (and cultural relevance) that's being eaten up by the fire. so if ya'll wanna help, here's some links:

maui food bank: https://mauifoodbank.org/

maui humane society: https://www.mauihumanesociety.org/

center for native hawaiian advancement: https://www.memberplanet.com/campaign/cnhamembers/kakoomaui

hawai'i red cross: https://www.redcross.org/local/hawaii/ways-to-donate.html

please reblog and spread the word if you can't donate.

"On March 2nd, as you came again, "the middle" occurred, bringing what had been into what endures. Time gathered into the fourth dimension of intimacy, as if we had stepped directly out of eternity—and returned into it. But, closest one, you should know this: "intending and delicate"—nothing forgotten, with every contrary added to it whole—all your pain, scarcely measured, and all my absence, without denying it to myself, rang in a long ringing of the bell of the world in our hearts. It rang in the morning light, and for days afterward that moment of the distant hearing of the now dawned for us. You—Hannah—you Your Martin" Martin Heidegger to Hannah Arendt, Messkirch, May, 1950